Five areas – education, healthcare, local government, security, and justice – will be the focus of the new Anti-Corruption PACT (Partnership Against Corruptive Tendencies – PACT) project, which the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) has started with the support of the United States Embassy in Podgorica, and will be implemented in collaboration with the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC).
This project is a continuation of CCE’s multi-year efforts in the fight against corruption, and aims to improve the functionality of the rule of law and increase the level of government accountability in Montenegro. More specifically, the project focuses on strengthening institutional and alternative mechanisms for detecting and preventing corruption among public officials while raising awareness among citizens about various forms of corruption and the damages caused by its inadequate address.
The selection of education, healthcare, local government, security, and justice as specific areas is based on their exceptional importance for the well-being of citizens and the stability of society. The project includes a series of activities aimed at identifying specific corruption-related issues in these sectors and developing effective strategies to combat them.
The project takes a multidimensional approach, both in addressing different target groups and in tailoring activities to these target groups. In this context, among other, the CCE will be an ally to citizens in the fight against corruption, providing them with the opportunity to report information about the activities of public officials that they believe contain elements of corruption. After sampling and verifying the information, it will be further processed by the relevant authorities.
Ultimately, this project aims to contribute to a framework in which authorities are accountable for their actions, citizens are more resilient to corruption, and corruption is combated at all levels, and it will be implemented over the next 18 months.
The Anti-Corruption Pact (Partnership Against Corruptive Trendencies – PACT) project is funded by a grant from the United States Department of State. The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government.
Mira Popović Trstenjak, Coordinator of the Democratization and Europeanization Programme